Welcome to Glenn's Blog!

Here I will periodically post random thoughts and stories about what's going on in my life and the world around me. As if anyone cared. But seriously, you've found your way here, so hopefully you will enjoy at least some of what I have to say, even if you aren't entirely interested in it. At the least, it should be a good way to waste time.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Black Friday

Well another year of mad doorbuster deal shopping after Thanksgiving has passed. Though it's not even 9am right now on Black Friday, most stores have already been open over 8 hours already in their quest to entice shoppers to come and spend money. I myself went out early this morning, though with not a whole lot of specific things to look for.

Actually, with the stores opening at midnight this year, all of the crazy shoppers had come and gone by the time I set out on foot at 5am to brave the madness. And this was quite helpful too; between 5am and 7am I visited both the Wal Mart and Target in Natomas, and neither one was busy. In fact, both stores had and handful of cashiers just standing around and waiting for someone to buy something. They would literally fight over you as you approached the registers with goods in hand, each one of them hoping to finally have something to do.

I actually went out for a specific DVD which was on sale, and it seems that every door buster item was well in stock except for the one I was looking for. There were palates full of $49 Blu Ray players and shelves of half price in-ear headphones and flat screen LCD TVs galore. There plenty of DVD and Blu Ray movies for the picking. Just not, as luck would have it, the one gift that I actually set out to buy.

So, having gone in with the intent of buying a $10 movie, in good holiday fashion I came home with over $100 of other stuff. You're welcome, economy.

It's funny though how some folks just buy stuff because it's on sale, whether they need it or not or if they even know what it is. One lady picked up the movie 300 (pronounced "three hundred") at Wal Mart, and shouted to her husband one aisle: "Hey, they got Three Thousand. Three Thousand is over here." He replied back "Yeah, get that too".

Really people?

Well, it's approaching 9am, so I guess I'll take a cue from my cats and get ready for a nap.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

FeNAM!

Well, just as quickly as it started, this year's Festival of New American Music draws to a close today. This one wasn't too bad actually, though I did have a 15 hour day yesterday and several other 12+ hour days this past week. But, that's pretty typical. Today I'm going for something that I don't normally do...I'm actually going to watch all three concerts today. It's rare for me to watch any concerts these days as I'm just too busy doing other things, but today I'm doing the hat trick.

The highlight will, I think, be the California Youth Symphony at Mondavi. They are an amazing youth group, better than a lot of college groups, and though my composition teacher is their director and I usually get free passes to their bay area concerts, I've never actually seen them live. Today's program features Copland's Billy the Kid and Bernstein's On the Waterfront.

This year's festival has been something of a stoner convention; I don't think there's been a day yet were clouds of vapor haven't trailed into the Music Recital Hall with our audiences. Maybe you need to be high to truly appreciate some of this stuff, I don't know. The theremin concert which opened the festival surely was a good candidate for that. The whole concert was like an acid trip from the 1960s. Seriously. I'm not even exaggerating.

I was fortunate enough to have a work played on the festival this year; the first two movements of my Trio for Oboe, Clarinet, and Viola were played both at the Student Chamber Ensembles concert and the Student Artists Performance Competition. It was good times really, and the innovation for this year was that many concerts were video recorded and streamed online at Live Stream, so you can go back and watch them again - or catch the ones you missed. It's pretty cool actually; folks have watched our concerts in over 20 different countries, including Japan, Korea, Thailand, Australia, Mexico, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ireland to name a few.

Well it's just about 8:30 Sunday morning now, so I guess it's time to try and get caught up a little on the homework I've fallen behind on. This semester's graduate Ethnomusicology course will be the last class I need for my Master's degree, then it's on to my final project!